Assumed Identity

3

Here, as at Club Internacional, the beach was deserted, tourists preferring to go to bed early or else to party at Cancun’s many night spots. Buchanan chose a hotel that didn’t have an outdoor bar behind it and trudged from the sand. Remaining in the shadows, he found a lounge chair beneath a palm tree and slumped. There were other chairs, but what had attracted him to this particular chair was that a guest had left a towel on it.

He slipped the belt from the top of his right shoulder, pressed the folded towel over his wound, and looped the belt several times over the towel, securing it tightly, attempting to make a pressure bandage. Although the towel became wet and dark in places, it seemed to reduce his loss of blood. For how long, he couldn’t tell. Right now, all he wanted to do was rest.

But there was too much to do.

He unlooped the laces that attached his deck shoes to his right wrist. The canvas of his shoes was pliant because of the water. It shouldn’t have been difficult putting them on his feet. But doing so and lacing them were among the hardest tasks he’d ever attempted.

His skull throbbed from its impact against the dinghy. The sharp pain remained as severe. Gingerly raising his left hand to his wet hair, he touched a gash and felt a large area of swelling. The water in his hair prevented him from determining if the gash was bleeding and, if so, how much.

At the same time, the salt in the water had severely aggravated the pain in his wounded right shoulder. That injury, too, was swollen. It pulsed against the pressure bandage. In addition, disturbingly, the fingers of Buchanan’s right hand trembled.

He told himself that the trembling must be the result of the trauma to his shoulder or of the struggle with the first twin and his subsequent swim across the channel. Relief after stress. Something like that. Hey, when you exercise with weights, he reminded himself, your hands sometimes shake afterward. Sure.

But only his right hand trembled, not both of them, and the fingers seemed to have a will of their own. He couldn’t help worrying that something serious was wrong.

Move. You’re acting like you’ve never been in a firefight before.

With effort, he stepped closer to the back of the hotel, leaving the shadows of the beach, moving warily onto concrete, passing more palm trees, approaching muted lights around a small oval swimming pool.

The pool, surrounded by tropical bushes and patio furniture, was deserted. Staying close to the cover of shrubs, Buchanan reached the first dim overhead light, where he noticed that his wet shoes left prints on the concrete. He noticed as well that his shirt and pants still dripped water. What interested him most, though, was that the blood on his clothes had been rinsed away. A small blessing in a night of disasters. As soon as his shirt and pants dried, they wouldn’t attract attention. But the blood on the towel strapped to his shoulder would certainly make people look twice.

He needed something to loop over his shoulder and conceal the towel. A jacket would be ideal, but the only way he could think to get one was by breaking into a room, and that was out of the question. Oh, he could pick a lock with ease if he had the equipment, which in this case he didn’t, but only amateurs smashed windows and caused a disruption, which in this case he’d be forced to do.

So what are you going to do?

The pain from his injured skull aggravated the pain in his wounded shoulder. The combination was excruciating. Again he felt dizzy.

While he still had strength, he had to hurry.

He veered to the left toward a tunnel. Concrete stairs led up to the right toward the rooms on the upper floors. But his interest was directed inside the tunnel toward stairs on the left that went down. He couldn’t imagine that a hotel with as impressive a design as this would be crude enough to lodge tourists below ground. So the only reason the hotel would have rooms down there would be for storage and maintenance.

He squinted at his digital Seiko watch, the sort of timepiece he’d decided an ex-DEA officer would wear. It was still functioning after his swim, and when he pressed a button on the side, the LED display showed 11:09. This late, he doubted that the maintenance staff would still be working. He listened carefully for any voices or footsteps that might echo up the stairwell. Hearing none, he started down.

His rubber-soled deck shoes made almost no sound on the stairs. At a platform, the stairs reversed direction and took him to a dimly illuminated corridor. It smelled moldy and damp. The odor would be a further reason for workers not to remain down here. Peering cautiously from the bottom of the stairwell, seeing no one at either end of the corridor, he stepped from cover, proceeded arbitrarily to the right, came to a metal door, listened, heard no sound behind it, and turned the knob. It was locked.

He continued to another door, and this time after he listened and tried the knob, he exhaled as the knob moved. Slowly pushing the door open, he groped along the inside wall, found a light switch, and flicked it on, relaxing when he saw that the room was unoccupied. The light bulb that dangled from the ceiling was as sickly a yellow as those in the corridor. The room was lined with metal shelves upon which tools and boxes had been stored. A small rusted metal desk was wedged in one corner, and on the desk-

— despite his pain, Buchanan felt a surge of excitement-

— sat a black rotary telephone.

He shut the door, locked it, and picked up the phone. His heart pounded as he heard a tone. He quickly dialed a number.

A man answered. Buchanan’s case officer. To be near Buchanan at this phase of the mission, he’d rented an apartment in the mainland part of Cancun. Normally, he and Buchanan communicated by means of coded messages left at prearranged dead-drop locations on a predetermined schedule. Rarely, because of the risk of electronic eavesdropping, did they speak on the telephone, and only then between preselected pay phones. Never, while Buchanan was under deep cover, had they met. Buchanan had access to a protective backup team if he suspected he was in danger, but given the paranoia of the men he’d arranged to meet tonight, it had been decided that the benefit of the backup team’s presence in and around Club Internacional would be offset by the danger that the drug distributors and their backup team would sense they were being watched. After all, the mission had been progressing according to plan. There’d been no reason to suspect that the meeting would not go smoothly. Until Big Bob Bailey showed up. Now Buchanan didn’t have to worry about jeopardizing his cover if he phoned his case officer. What worse could happen? Buchanan’s contacts were dead. The mission was blown.

What worse could happen? Oh, something worse could happen, all right. The Mexican police could capture him, and his superiors could be implicated in three murders. He had to disappear.

“Yes,” Buchanan’s case officer said.

“Is that you, Paul?”

“I’m sorry. No one by that name lives here.”

“You mean this isn’t. .?” Buchanan gave a telephone number.

“You’re not even close.”

“Sorry.”

Buchanan hung up and rubbed his throbbing forehead. The number he’d given his controller was a coded message for which an expanded translation would be that the mission had to be aborted, that an absolute disaster had occurred, that he’d been injured, was on the run, and had to be extracted from the area as soon as possible. By prior agreement, his case officer would try to rendezvous with Buchanan ninety minutes after Buchanan’s call. The rendezvous location was on the mainland in downtown Cancun, outside a cantina near the intersection of Tulum and Coba avenues. But every plan had to allow for contingencies, had to have numerous alternate agendas. So if Buchanan didn’t make the rendezvous, his case officer would try again at eight tomorrow morning outside a coffee shop on Uxmal Avenue, and if Buchanan still did not arrive, the case officer would try once more at noon outside a pharmacy on Yaxchilan Avenue. If that third contact failed to happen, Buchanan’s case officer would return to his apartment and wait for Buchanan to get in touch with him. Forty-eight hours later, if the case officer still hadn’t heard from Buchanan, he would assume a worst-possibility scenario and get out of the country, lest he too become a liability. A delicate investigation would be set into motion to learn what had happened to Buchanan.

Ninety minutes from now, Buchanan thought. I have to get to that cantina. But spasms in his right hand distracted him. He stared down and saw the fingers of his right hand-and only those fingers, not those on his left hand-twitching again. They seemed not to belong to him. They seemed controlled by a force that wasn’t his. He didn’t understand. Had the bullet that slashed his shoulder injured the nerves that led down to his fingers?

He suddenly had trouble concentrating. The pain in his skull increased. His bullet wound throbbed. He felt something warm and wet seep from the towel that formed a pressure bandage over his wound. He didn’t need to look to know that the towel, held in place by his belt, was becoming saturated and starting to leak.

His vision became alarmingly hazy. At once, it cleared as he tensed, hearing footsteps beyond the door.

The footsteps echoed slowly, hesitantly, along the concrete corridor, increasing in volume. They stopped outside the door. Buchanan sweated, frowning when he saw and heard the doorknob being turned. As a matter of course, he had locked the door after he’d entered the room. Even so, whoever was out there presumably worked for the hotel and might have a key. Someone out there pushed at the door. When it wouldn’t open, the person shoved harder, then rammed what probably was a shoulder against it. No effect.

“Who is in this room?” a gruff male voice demanded in Spanish. Knuckles rapped on the door. “Answer me.” A fist pounded. “What are you doing in there?”

If he’s got a key, now is when he’ll use it, Buchanan thought. But what made him come down here and check this particular room? The hesitant footsteps I heard along the corridor. . the man seemed almost to be looking for something.

Or following something?

As Buchanan shifted quietly toward the side of the door where he could shut off the light and grab the man if he used a key to enter, he glanced down and realized that the man had indeed been following something. Buchanan’s drenched clothes had dripped on the concrete, making a trail.

Buchanan listened nervously for the metallic scrape of a key that the man would shove into the lock. Instead, what Buchanan heard was more pounding, another indignant “What are you doing in there?” and sudden silence.

Maybe he doesn’t have a key. Or else he’s afraid to use it.

Abruptly the footsteps retreated, clattering along the corridor, diminishing up the stairway.

I’ve got to get out of here before he has time to come back with help, Buchanan thought. He freed the lock, opened the door, checked the dim corridor, and was just about to leave when he noticed what seemed like rags on one of the shelves. The rags were actually a rumpled, soiled cotton work jacket and a battered, stained baseball cap from which the patch had been torn. He grabbed them. After using the jacket to wipe his fingerprints from everything he’d touched, he hurried along the corridor and up the staircase, seeing the wet trail he’d made.

The trail didn’t matter now. All that did was getting away from the hotel before the worker came back with help. They’ll probably call the police about a prowler. The police will be so frantic to arrest a suspect for the three killings that they might decide this incident is related. They’ll focus their search in this area.

Buchanan swung toward where the shadowy beach would eventually take him near downtown Cancun. Heading north, he ran midway between the white-capped waves and the gleaming hotels. A fragrant sea breeze cooled the sweat on his brow and cleared the utility room’s foul smell from his nostrils. The breeze had sufficient strength that it might even dry his wet clothes.

But abruptly he stumbled, losing his balance enough that he almost fell. It wouldn’t have worried him so much if he had tripped over an unseen object. However, he had stumbled for the worst reason he could imagine. Because he was weaker. His wound pulsed, soaking the towel with blood. His skull throbbed from the sharpest headache of his life.

Wedged between his right arm and his side, he had the rumpled cotton work jacket and the stained baseball cap. Gingerly, he set the cap on his head. The cap was battered enough that it might attract attention, but without it, the blood that it hid would certainly attract a lot more attention. Breathing with effort, he draped the soiled work jacket over his right shoulder, hiding the bloodstained towel strapped over his wound. Now he could take the chance of showing himself in public. But as he pushed a button on his watch and looked at the digital time display, he discovered to his shock that almost an hour had passed since he’d phoned his case officer. That’s impossible! I left the utility room just a little while ago.

You think.

Pal, you must be having blackouts.

Buchanan’s thoughts became more urgent. He would have to veer between hotels and get a taxi on the thruway. Otherwise, he’d never be able to reach the rendezvous site in time to meet his case officer. Unsteady, he left the beach.

He’d been right about one thing at least-the breeze from the sea had dried his clothes sufficiently that they didn’t stick to him.

But the breeze no longer had any effect on the sweat that dripped from his brow.